Market Forces
Went to the Kahn market in Delhi with Pasang today. Imagine a superwalmart's worth of food and merchandise, but sold piece-meal by individual vendors. The meat stalls are all grouped together, and the veggies are together, and the shoes are together and so forth. Shopping here is definitely less organized than in the states, but it seems you can get almost all the same products, provided you know where to look.
We were there for the week's groceries, so the first stop was the butcher section. Besides the live goats and chickens in cages, the most memorable thing about the butcher section of the market was the smell. Surprisingly, it wasn't constant, going from the obvious (rotting meat and/or feces) to the unexpected (rotting cabbage) to the bizarre (toasted bagels).
I was surprised by how unconcerned the caged goats and chickens were about their circumstance. It was crowded in the cages, and the lanes between stalls were bustling with people. The animals must have been able to smell the blood of their compatriots, so why they weren't going nuts is beyond me. For a good ol' suburban-raised American, this was closer to the source of my food than I am normally used to. Even though 80-cents-a-pound chicken is cheap, I can appreciate the attraction of Frank Purdue's plastic-wrapped mark-up.
As for Pasang, the woman may be short but she's a feisty negotiator. She walked away from a stall after the meat was cut because "they changed the deal." She insisted on only seeing meat that had been butchered in the last hour, which seemed reasonably since nothing was refrigerated. She inferred from the color and smell of the meat how healthy the animal must have been, and was very specific about how it be cut from the carcass. As strange as it sounds, she clearly knew what she was doing and it was a pleasure to watch her work.
From the meats we went to vegetables, grains and beans doing approximately the same thing. By the end of about 90 minutes we walked away with two bags full of food for the week, from which she expected to feed herself, her daughter, Dave, Shannon and me. All told I think she spent about 1500 rupees, about $35.
We were there for the week's groceries, so the first stop was the butcher section. Besides the live goats and chickens in cages, the most memorable thing about the butcher section of the market was the smell. Surprisingly, it wasn't constant, going from the obvious (rotting meat and/or feces) to the unexpected (rotting cabbage) to the bizarre (toasted bagels).
I was surprised by how unconcerned the caged goats and chickens were about their circumstance. It was crowded in the cages, and the lanes between stalls were bustling with people. The animals must have been able to smell the blood of their compatriots, so why they weren't going nuts is beyond me. For a good ol' suburban-raised American, this was closer to the source of my food than I am normally used to. Even though 80-cents-a-pound chicken is cheap, I can appreciate the attraction of Frank Purdue's plastic-wrapped mark-up.
As for Pasang, the woman may be short but she's a feisty negotiator. She walked away from a stall after the meat was cut because "they changed the deal." She insisted on only seeing meat that had been butchered in the last hour, which seemed reasonably since nothing was refrigerated. She inferred from the color and smell of the meat how healthy the animal must have been, and was very specific about how it be cut from the carcass. As strange as it sounds, she clearly knew what she was doing and it was a pleasure to watch her work.
From the meats we went to vegetables, grains and beans doing approximately the same thing. By the end of about 90 minutes we walked away with two bags full of food for the week, from which she expected to feed herself, her daughter, Dave, Shannon and me. All told I think she spent about 1500 rupees, about $35.
posted by Linton at 2:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home